Warren: Some corporations have grown so massive that they-re acting - and being treated - like nation-states. Is that wise?

As corporate giants like Google, Facebook and Apple have become as powerful as some nation-state, there’s a growing need for countries like Canada to find effective ways to ensure those corporations act in the national interest.

In that strategy, Denmark may have something to teach us about working with the world’s biggest technology companies. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen announced recently that his country will create a new diplomatic post, “a digital ambassador,” to act as the country’s state representative to the world’s largest and most powerful tech companies.

Influential international corporations have existed for centuries. But these tech companies are providing a communications universe to individuals and businesses, dominating world advertising and permeating the local culture of almost every country on Earth.

They operate largely under their own privacy and news dissemination rules, which are not always in sync with the host country’s protective policies.

In a Washington Post interview, Samuelsen said, “Just as we engage in a diplomatic dialogue with countries, we also need to establish comprehensive relations with these tech actors, such as Google, Facebook and Apple. The idea is, we see a lot of companies and new technologies that will in many ways involve and be part of everyday life of citizens of Denmark. And some of these companies have the size and influence that is comparable to nations.”

Samuelsen is right about the size and clout of these Silicon Valley actors. The revenue of the top U.S. tech firms totalled more than a third of a trillion dollars in 2015. That’s more than the GDP of Greece and Portugal combined. According to Foreign Policy magazine, the cash that Apple has on hand exceeds the GDP of two-thirds of the world’s nations.

There is the clear potential for these “meganationals” to overtake most states in terms of economic impact. Right now, half of the largest 100 economies in the world are corporations, and that percentage is growing.

It seems the law of national sovereignty is being eclipsed by the law of supply and demand.

There are those who believe the U.S. tech companies will grow stronger than Wall Street, even stronger than their host nations, moving them from being stateless to being virtual states. We might see them morphing into their own society run by technology. Social communities exist mostly online, so why couldn’t meganationals and their operations move entirely from terra firma and the regulation of any country onto the cloud?

Denmark’s digital ambassador will have a tight connection to the rest of that country’s diplomatic system and staff resources around the world. Samuelsen says the role will not be symbolic. “The fact is that artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, the Internet of everything, driverless cars and all these things that these companies are working with and the world has to deal with, are part of our daily life in Denmark.”

Denmark has been working closely with these tech giants for some time. Last year it announced deals with both Apple and Facebook to build large data centres in Denmark, providing hundreds of new jobs.

Samuelsen points out that more than half of the world’s data has been created in the last two years. Some of it is by intelligence agencies and states, but most of it is collected by companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and others.

For countries around the world, this raises serious policy questions about the privacy of their citizens, the containment of “fake news” and information wars with countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

These are issues that will only grow and Denmark is determined to have a strategy to control the impact on its citizens.

The appointment of a digital ambassador provides that country with a formalized process to negotiate further investment in the Danish information technology. It also gives Denmark another avenue to do business with the U.S. in the face of growing Trump nationalism.

The idea of countries having senior point-people responsible for business relations with major U.S tech companies is not new. What is new here is treating these companies as if they were nation-states.

Much of the concern about trade agreements centres around giving corporations the right sue member nations for non-performance and actions against a corporation’s financial interests. The appointment of an ambassador gives the clear impression to the corporations that they have achieved the same status and rights of a sovereign state.

But corporations are not states. They report to their shareholders, not the much broader national electorate. They are concerned with the bottom line, while governments are concerned with the pursuit of equal opportunity for all. Treating corporations like states runs the danger of the interests of the state becoming subordinated to those of corporations.

Some feel we are already there.

Only time will tell whether Denmark’s formal state-to-corporation ambassadorial relationship will spread to other countries. Regardless, when countries are dealing with the impact that tech mammoths like Google, Facebook and Apple are having on their citizens’ privacy, news sources, advertising and culture, they need all the leverage they can create.

Meanwhile, the digital revolution leaps ahead at warp speed with the private sector in the driver’s seat and governments tying to give direction from behind.